By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty, (www.bannerofliberty.com)
October 16, 2002
In a gushy article written by Evelyn Nieves of the Washington Post we are told that “Life has become one big anti-war rally” for at least one professional protestor against President Bush’s determination to fight the war on Terrorism. “Peace groups believe they can still avert a war by convincing politicians that the majority of Americans oppose unilateral action against Iraq,” Nieves wrote.
Nieves probably was writing to encourage the International Action Center which announced the same night as Bush’s speech: “The Anti-War Movement’s Response to Tonight’s Televised Speech by George Bush: Hundreds of Thousands will march against war with Iraq on October 26 in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Cities Around the World.”
That may be an uphill battle, since the majority of Americans DON’T oppose Bush’s action. The latest Gallup poll shows 57% of the public in favor of sending troops to oust Saddam Hussein and the latest Pew Research Center reports that 64% percent favor taking military action to end the Iraqi president's rule.
Last Friday in Palm Springs, Florida students on the MacArthur Campus of Florida Atlantic University staged a protest against “the United States going to war with Iraq” according to an account by Larry Keller a staff writer for the Palm Beach Post. “Kids, this wasn't your parents' anti-war rally,” Keller warned. Instead of the “tens of thousands of angry, raucous” Vietnam War era demonstrators, there were only three to four dozen people at the anti-war rally.
In fact, in the ultimate put-down for a peace activist, Keller reported the “protest could easily have been mistaken for a picnic, as students grilled burgers and munched on fruit while sitting in beach chairs on the tidy suburban campus listening to taped tunes by '60s legends such as Jimi Hendrix; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; and Janis Joplin.” Reuters reportedthat “there was little sign of a mass anti-war movement developing in the United States as the Bush administration has won backing from Congress to use force if necessary to disarm Iraq and is also seeking a tough resolution from the United Nations to send in weapons inspectors.”
Even in San Francisco, usually the hotbed of liberal action, only about 500 people showed up last week and 46 of them, almost 10% of the group, were arrested for blocking entrances to the federal building.
And, we are less than two weeks away from seeing “Hundreds of Thousands march against the war with Iraq in America’s major cities?” Somehow, I don’t think so. In fact, having organized some peace demonstrations in the early 1960s, when the issue was President John F. Kennedy’s opposition to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and as a columnist during the Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, I don’t see anything like the concern among the youth I saw 35-40 years ago.
The demonstrations were about the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and were largely motivated by the concerns of mothers as we watched a rise in leukemia in children due to Strontium 90 from the above ground nuclear tests finding its way into our children’s milk.
Most of the student activists I met in the 1960s who opposed the Vietnam War also had a personal concern – that they might be drafted and be sent over to fight in some Vietnam rice paddy. Having not lived through World War II, the youth of the 1960s didn’t share their parents’ concern for preventing a larger and wider war by stopping tyrants early. The current Anti-Iraq pickets are wrong for pretty much the same reason the Anti-Vietnam war pickets were wrong, as I pointed out in an April 1966 column entitled: “Why the Pickets are Wrong.”
I wrote:
“The approximate point of view of the recent ‘International Days of Protest’ pickets goes something like this: ‘We should negotiate with Ho Chi Minh and North Vietnam through the United Nations. However, this really is just a simple civil war among the Vietnamese, and we have no business being involved. If we don’t get out, Red China may come in and then we’ll be in for another World War. Our actions in Viet Nam are just like Hitler’s actions in Poland and we Americans ought not support the atrocities committed by our leaders.’
“When President Johnson agreed to negotiate, and Ho refused, the pickets didn’t criticize Ho – they accused the President of not trying hard enough. When the President took it to the U.N. and Russia and France refused to support a U.N. debate on Vietnam, they blamed the President for not taking it to the U.N. fast enough. But they didn’t picket Russia and France for blocking the Peace Movement suggestions.
“There may be some valid comparisons between Southeast Asia in the 1960s and Europe in the 1930s, but it isn’t a similarity between LBJ and Hitler. … Today, as in the 1930s, there are people who feel that the squabbles in a faraway land will lead to another World War and consequently are willing to let the strong men have their way.
“It didn’t work in the 1930s in Europe. But, we are told, it will work now in Southeast Asia with Ho and Mao. Maybe they are right. However, our slight miscalculation with Hitler caused the death of 30 million human beings.”
Post Vietnam-war statistical research by R.J. Rummel shows that it didn’t work in Southeast Asia either: “Hanoi is probably responsible for the murder of almost 1,700,000 people, nearly 1,100,000 of them Vietnamese. The figure might even be close to a high of 3,700,000 dead, with Vietnamese around a likely 2,800,000 of them." Just as President Dwight Eisenhower predicted in the 1950s, the fall of Vietnam brought on the fall also of Laos and Cambodia, where another million people died.
Of course, the Anti-Vietnam War demonstrators never talk about those embarrassing casualties. Dead people in faraway places don’t matter to them, and STILL don’t matter to them, since most demonstrators were motivated by fears of being called to serve in the Armed forces and being sent into battle.
This time, however, the Anti-Iraq War demonstrators have to convince hundreds of thousands of Americans that the people who died in America on September 11, 2001 don’t matter and the possibility of millions more Americans dying from a nuclear or biological weapon in the hands of Saddam Hussein won’t matter.
It’s not just somebody else’s ox that is being gored. Today, it’s the American ox being gored – and that makes all the difference in trying to whip up a big anti-war demonstration.
To comment: Mary@bannerofliberty.com
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